When AEW Dynamite was going head to head with NXT on Wednesday nights there was a lot of talk about a competition between the two brands, but a number of people from both companies have downplayed the idea of a war between them.
Big Damo, formerly known as Killian Dain in WWE, recently spoke to Riju Dasgupta of Sportskeeda about the supposed AEW vs. NXT rivalry, and he confirmed that NXT talents did watch AEW matches backstage if there was something they wanted to see.
“Like, so, I think people would love [for] me to say it was this rivalry or whatever else, but the truth is, you know when we were going head-to-head if they had a particularly good match, we’d wanted to watch; we’d watch! You know what I mean? We’d be backstage in the locker room; we’ll be like, ‘Oh, such and such, let’s see that.’ A lot of [them] are our friends, [as is] with a lot of the guys on the roster.”
Damo went on to say that there was a rivalry in the sense that everyone wanted to do the best they could, but there wasn’t any hostility toward the AEW roster. He noted that the competition between AEW and NXT only helped to get talents motivated.
“So for us, there was a professional rivalry so far as, nobody wants to lose or anything like that, but at the same time, we knew it was great for the industry. We knew it was exactly what it was as us growing up watching, when it was WWF and WCW, maybe on a smaller scale, but for a lot of us, in the NXT locker room, it was a good way; an added motivation is probably the best way to put it. Listen, there’s no denying, if there is a really cool match, and we’re not doing something on the show that day, we’d be watching, you know what I mean because there were some crackers at the time.”
